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to eat some green wool and Mr Hird escaped from thebuilding. Outside, he met a farmer who was looking for ayoung cow. The police came and also the firemen, whoneeded a special lifting machine to get the animal out.The Worst ComputerWe often say that computers do things better thanpeople. But we have forgotten the computer that theAvon local government bought to help them to pay theirworkers.The computer’s little adventure started in a small way,paying a school cleaner 75 an hour instead of 75 pence.Then it decided not to pay a kitchen worker anything forseven weeks.Soon it started to do bigger things and paid a doorkeeper 2,600 for a week’s work. He sent the moneyback and immediately got the same again.By this time the computer was so sure of itself thatnobody could stop it. A school teacher got a year’s payevery month; workers got more money than the boss; andthe computer ordered some people to send more than ayear’s pay to the government.In February 1975, 280 local government workers metto talk about the problem. Only eight of them had theright pay. They all decided to stop work until the localgovernment threw away the stupid computer.7

The Doctor Who Surprised a CowIn 1977, a Dutch doctor had to go to see a sick cow. Heneeded to study the gases in the cow’s stomach. He hadto put a tube into the back end of the animal and light amatch. But as soon as he did this, fire shot out of the tubeand hit some dry grass, which started to burn. Soon all ofthe farm was one great fire. It cost , 45,000 to build itagain. The cow was all right but she was a little shaky.The Most Useless Post BoxIn 1979, workmen at Ballymacra, County Atrim inIreland were taking down old telegraph poles andputting up new ones. One of the old poles had a post boxon it. The workers did not have the key to unlock themetal ring that tied the post box to the pole. So theylifted the box and the metal ring over the top of the oldpole and dropped it down the new one. But the new polewas thicker than the old one and so the post box did notfall all the way down. Instead, it stopped nine feet abovethe ground.It stayed there for three weeks. During that time somepeople were able to post letters. ‘I have heard,’ said MrErnie McDermott, the postman, ‘that someone left aladder there,’8

The Most Useless Post Box

The Museum That Described a Coin WronglyIn October 1971 in County Durham some people made abig mistake. The South Shields Museum proudlydescribed one of the coins on show as a Roman coin.Miss Fiona Gordon, who was 9 years old, told themsomething about the coin that surprised them. It was, infact, a plastic coin that came from a business that soldsweet drinks. They gave them to people who returnedbottles to the shop.When they asked her to explain, she said, ‘I knewbecause I saw the letter “R” on one side of the coin.’A man from the museum said, ‘The coin looks just likea Roman coin. We thought the letter “R” meant “Roma”.In fact it was “R” for Robinsons, the business that makesthe drinks.’‘The date is wrong by almost 2,000 years,’ MissGordon said helpfully.The Most Unsuccessful Balloon JourneyIn 1823 Mr Charles Green, one of the first people totravel in a balloon, was getting ready for one of hisballoon journeys. He climbed into the basket and startedthe fire that lifted the balloon off the ground. The balloonwent up slowly but the basket stayed where it was.Someone forgot to tic the basket to the balloon orperhaps they did not tie it on purpose. Mr Green and hisfriend did not want to stay in the basket, so they held onto the balloon. People watched the balloon as it wentover the town of Cheltenham, with Mr Green and hisfriend still holding on underneath it.10

The Most Unsuccessful Balloon Journey

The Worst Way to Light a FireIn 1972 Derek Langbornc, from Upton, near the town ofDidcot in England, put some pieces of wood into hisfireplace in his living-room and began to light a fire.When the fire started, he went outside to get some morewood.But one piece of wood wanted to warm the room veryquickly and fell out of the fireplace on to the floor nextto a box of smaller pieces of wood. When Mr Langbornccame back, he saw that the box of wood was burning. Hequickly carried it out into the garden. On the way out ofthe house he knocked against a jacket on the back of thedoor. By the time he came back, the jacket and the doorwere both burning.As soon as he lifted the telephone to call the fire stationin Didcot he noticed that the box of wood in the gardenwas standing too near his car and that his car was nowburning.He then put on his coat and ran towards his car withsome water but on the way he knocked a tin of oil allover the ground.Seeing that Mr Langborne was busy, his neighbourcalled the fire station. By the time the firemen arrived,Mr Langborne’s coat was burning, too.The Most Unsuccessful Man-eaterIn 1970 a large, man-eating cat escaped from a show inItaly. When it saw a small boy, it naturally started to runafter him. Not so naturally, the boy’s mother stood infront of the animal and began to fight with it. She12

The Worst Way to Light a Fire

The Most Unsuccessful Man-eater

hurt the animal’s head and body so badly that it had to goto hospital.The Most Unsuccessful Last GoodbyeIn many countries, when someone dies their body lies inthe church so that everyone can say a final goodbye.The most unsuccessful final goodbye happened inMarch 1896 at a church in Methymni in Greece.After two days lying in a wooden box in the churchwith his best clothes on, Nicephorus Glycas suddenly satup. He looked round angrily at the people there andasked, ‘What are you all looking at?’The Most Stupid RobbersThree thieves at Billericay in Essex spent many hours in1971 planning to rob the post office in MountnessingRoad.They knew the best time to do it, when there was mostmoney in the building and no guard. They also boughtguns and a car to help them escape.So when the time came the Mountnessing robbersdrove very fast through Billericay to the post office.They jumped out of the car and ran towards thebuilding. That was when they realized somethingimportant. The post office was not a post office now. Itclosed twelve years before. The building was now anordinary shop.Mrs Gertrude Haylock, the 76-year-old shopkeeper,later explained, ‘I saw these two men running towards15

The Most Stupid Robbers

the shop with guns and I said to my customer, “Here’ssomebody trying to be funny.”’When they got inside the shop, the robbers pointedtheir guns at Mrs Haylock and her customer, Mrs Constance Clarke. They told Mrs Haylock to give them allthe money in the shop.There was only 6 in the shop because there were notmany customers. They took the money.‘I think they thought there were hundreds of pounds inthe shop. They looked so funny dressed like robbers. Itwas just like in a film,’ said Mrs Haylock.After the robbers left, Mrs Clarke felt suddenly illwhen she realized that they were real robbers with realguns.The Worst Bank RobbersIn August 1975 three robbers were going through thedoors of the Royal Bank of Scotland at Rothesay. Thedoors were the kind that went round in a circle. Suddenlythe doors stopped moving when the robbers were halfway through so that they could not move. Bank workershad to help them to get out. Looking uncomfortable, therobbers thanked everyone and left the building.A few minutes later they returned and tried to rob thebank but nobody thought that they were real bankrobbers. When they asked a woman for 5,000 shelaughed at them. Then they tried again and asked for 500, then 50 and finally 50 pence. By this time thewoman couldn’t stop laughing.Then one of the robbers jumped over the desk and fellon the floor, hurting his foot. The other two men ran tothe doors but the doors caught them for a second time:17

The Worst Bank Robbers

the two robbers were pushing them hard the wrong way.The Most Unsuccessful PhotographMr Monte Shoemaker did something truly great in 1978.He planned to photograph an important rich man whenhe was doing something that people usually want to keepsecret. He planned this so that the man had to pay him tokeep the photograph a secret.He hid in a bedroom cupboard. His girlfriend broughtthe man into the room. Mr Shoemaker waited a fewminutes, then jumped out of the cupboard and photographed them. Then he asked for money.When the photograph was ready, it did not show therich man without his clothes on. Instead, it showed arefrigerator in the corner of the room.The Thief Who Was Not Good At ClimbingThrough WindowsOur favourite sort of thief is not very quick on his feet.Mr Christopher Fleming was one of these. In 1978, MrFleming wanted to steal money from a Chinese restaurant in Tiverton in Devon. He planned to climb through akitchen window and steal as much money as possible,then climb back through the window again.In one quick unusual movement he climbed through thewindow and fell into a large pot of cooking oil. With theoil all over him he continued with his plan and went towhere the money was.19

He could not find very much money, only a few coins,which he put into his pockets. Outside, the oily thiefwalked straight into the arms of a policeman.The Robber Who Gave His Money AwayA man planned to steal money from a supermarket inSouthampton in 1977. He went round the shop in theusual way, choosing things to buy. Then he went to paythe shopkeeper. He put 10 of coins on the desk. Whilethe woman was counting the money he put his arm overthe desk and took all the money that was there. He thenran out of the shop. But he lost 5.63 because there wasonly 4.37 in the desk at the time.The woman was not sure what to do at first. Shescreamed for a minute and then her friend Betty came tohelp her.The Most Unsuccessful EscapeOne of the most unsuccessful escapes happened inDetroit in 1970. Someone stole the car that two bankrobbers were planning to use to drive away from thebank. When the robbers ran out of the bank into thestreet, their car was gone.But in July 1978 two robbers were much better failuresthan that. They were more than just unlucky — theywere stupid, too. They robbed a shop in Perivale inMiddlesex. When they went into the shop, they took 4,500 and then ran out to their car.It was then that things started to get interesting. One20

of the robbers, Mr O’Connor, was the driver. He jumpedin, turned the key the wrong way and broke the lock. Thetwo then jumped into another car and did the same thingagain.But that was not all. The cars were pointing the wrongway for their escape. They were pointing straight at thepolice station.The Man Who Could Not Catch a ThiefDuring 1978 a thief returned every night to the samenewspaper shop in Barking, Essex to steal 10. Everymorning the money was gone and so the shopkeeperplanned to catch the thief.The shopkeeper brought a very large box into his shop.He put the box in the middle of the floor. After closingthe shop at five o’clock, he climbed into the box andspent the night there.There was no movement until fourteen hours laterwhen the very clever detective came out of his hidingplace to go to the toilet. He was away for only a fewminutes. But when he returned, another , 10 was gone.The Most Unsuccessful Police DogIn America, there was a dog, ‘La Dur’, who looked veryfrightening. He stopped working for the Orlando policein Florida in 1978 because he never did anything toworry robbers, thieves or other criminals.The policeman whose dog it was, Rick Grim, had to21

agree: ‘He’s useless. He just doesn’t bite them. I got tiredof doing the dog’s work for him.’The British examples are worse. British police taught‘Laddie’ and ‘Boy’ to look for things that people hid.They lost their jobs after a visit to a flat in 1967.The policeman was questioning two men, who spoke tothe dogs in friendly way until the dogs went to sleep infront of the fire. When the policeman tried to take holdof the arm of one of the men, the dogs were angry andone of them bit the policeman’s leg.The Man Who Was Unhelpfully BraveSometimes people try to be brave to help someone introuble. In July 1978 bank workers at Sherman Oaks inCalifornia did not want to take a packet that a manbrought into the bank. They thought the man was arobber and so they sent him away with his packet. Theywere glad when they saw the man run outside with hispacket.Outside, another man saw the man running away fromthe bank and decided to try and catch him. He caught theman and carried the packet back into the bank. Inside thepacket there was a smoke bomb, which blew all over thebank two minutes later.It took thirty minutes for the smoke to clear.The Most Unsuccessful HangingsThere are two hangmen that we must remember. Thefirst of them worked in Sydney in Australia. In 1803 hetried22

The Man Who Was Unhelpfully Brave

The Most Unsuccessful Hangings

three times to hang a Mr Joseph Samuels. The first twotimes Mr Samuels fell to the floor. The third time he justhung there until he and all the other people were tired ofwaiting. Since they could not hang him they decided toforgive him and he went free.The second one was British, a Mr James Berry. MrBerry tried three times in 1885 to hang Mr John Lee atExeter Prison, but each time he was unable to open thespecial door under the prisoner’s feet.After this, the British government decided to send Leeto prison for a long time instead. He came out of prisonin 1917, travelled to Australia and lived there until 1933.The Worst FishermanThomas Birch was a man of learning who lived in the1700s. He liked to go fishing but he didn’t catch verymany fish. So he decided to dress like a tree to hidehimself from the fish. He made some clothes that werelike a tree, with little holes for his eyes.He put on the clothes and went down to the river. Buthe still did not catch anything. No fish came near him.But dogs came to see him and friends sat down next tohim to have their lunch.The Worst Game of FootballIn 1973 the Oxbarn football players were getting ready toplay a game in Germany. The players were a group offriends who usually played on Sundays against other25

The Worst Fisherman

small local clubs in Britain. They were looking forwardto the game and also a holiday in Germany.When they walked out into the very large footballground in Germany, they realized that they were playingone of the best German clubs — S V W Mainz. TheGerman footballers thought the British players belongedto another club - Wolverhampton Wanderers — whichwas one of the strongest football clubs in Britain at thattime.An Oxbarn player said, ‘I thought it was a bit strangewhen I saw the size of the crowd.’About half way through the game - it was already 15-0to the Germans - the crowd saw Oxbarn’s centre fall tohis knees. He looked like he was crying. Naturally, theGerman crowd were very pleased that the Oxbarn clubwas playing instead of Wolverhampton Wanderers.‘They were very good about it,’ one of the Oxbarnplayers said. ‘When we got the ball, they started to shoutto help us win.’Oxbarn Football Club lost 21-0.The Smallest Football CrowdWho remembers that great game between Leicester Cityand Stockport County on 7 May 1921? It is famous forhaving the smallest crowd. Only thirteen people watchedit. In fact both sides were playing away from home.Stockport’s home ground was closed and so they had toplay in the very large ground belonging to the wellknown club Manchester United.27

The Happy FailureA Norwegian singer was singing a wonderfully boringsong in the European Song Show in 1978. Many singersfrom different countries were there. At the end of theshow people from each country had to decide which songwas the best. They also decided which song was theworst. Unusually they all agreed: ‘Norway gets zero outof ten/Next morning the newspaper stories were naturally allabout the Norwegian singer, Mr Teigan, while there wereonly a few words about the winning singer, Izhar Cohen.After the show newspaper photographers crowded roundMr Teigan, welcoming him like a popstar.‘This is my greatest success,’ he said. ‘I have donesomething that nobody has done before me. I’m the firstNorwegian to get zero. After the show they asked me tosing parts of the song sixty times for the photographers.And I’m going to be on television and singing all overEurope. People have never been so interested in mebefore.’The Funniest Modern PicturesTo understand modern pictures, you have to be able tothink in a free way about them. Nothing has shown thismore than a Frankfurt show of works by an exciting newpainter, Yamasaki, in 1978. The man who was showingthe pictures, Mr Feddersen, wrote about Yama-saki’swonderfully bright colours and strong, interestingshapes. In only three hours, visitors bought all twentytwo of the pictures for as much as 500 each.28

The Funniest Modern Pictures

Excitement grew when the news came that the painterwas there and was ready to answer questions about hiswork. You can guess how glad all the free-thinkingpeople were when Mr Feddersen brought in a monkey.‘He just threw paint all over the place,’ he explained.He wanted the money for a different kind of show inwhich animals did funny things for children to watch.The Most Unsuccessful Showing of a PictureBetween 17 October and 3 December 1961 the famouspicture Le Bateau by Henri Matisse hung in a show inNew York. But the great painter’s work was hanging thewrong way — the top was at the bottom. The pictureshows a sailing boat in the water on a summer’s day.About 116,000 visitors went round the show before thepainter’s son noticed the mistake.The Most Unsuccessful WarshipIn times of war, everyone must be ready to die for hiscountry. Nothing has shown this more clearly than thewarship HMS Trinidad in 1941 when it used anunderwater weapon against a German ship. The twoships were sailing in the Arctic Sea and the icy waterchanged the way the weapon travelled. Instead of goingstraight towards the German ship it began to turn. In afew seconds the weapon turned round and was on its wayback to the Trinidad. The sailors successfully hit a shipbut sadly it was theirs. The Trinidad could no

Stephen Pile wrote The Book of Heroic Failures in 1979 and said immediately, "I will never write another book about failures." Soon after that, he wrote More Heroic Failures. Mr Pile decided never to become a writer many years ago, not long before he began writing for newspapers and wrote his first book. He lives in Richmond, a part of London.